I recently received an email from someone who wanted to start the nutrisystem diet early next week. However, on Friday of the same week, she began a weekend in which one of her best friends was getting married, and she knew that she would not be able to strictly follow the diet during the few days that she attended to her wedding duties. . Still, she didn’t want to let this event stop her from getting started on her weight loss goals. I wanted to know if it was possible to skip a day with nutrisystem (since ketosis is involved) or if this would screw everything up. She wondered if it would be better to wait until after the wedding to start. I guess the central question here is can you sometimes skip a day on nutrisystem and still be successful? I will address this issue in the next article.
Taking an occasional day off on the Nutrisystem diet: First of all, it’s important to understand that there are actually two mechanisms at play with this diet. Not only will you lose some weight by eating fewer calories, but the goal is also to get your body into ketosis, where it burns fat since it doesn’t have as many carbs available for fuel. The foods on the diet are designed to have lower amounts of sugars and carbohydrates. So, you’re really not going to have to think much about this equation. As long as you don’t cheat, this process should work on its own.
And, as long as you stay in ketosis, both processes will work together and you should lose weight at a pretty decent rate. Of course, if you take a day off and eat carbs with wild abandon, then your body will have those to burn instead of fat and will make the most of this. But, that really doesn’t mean all is lost. As long as you get back on course relatively quickly, it only takes a couple of days to get back into fat burning mode and you’ll immediately start eating fewer calories when you start back on the plan.
The company also takes this into account. They even have a program called nutrisystem flex that allows you to take two days off a week. Of course, you shouldn’t arbitrarily eat junk food or large amounts of calories, fat, or carbohydrates on these days off and then expect to get the results you want. The foods you cheat with are far more important than whether or not you cheat. It is much better to eat a hamburger than a slice of cake. You’re betting on eating chips than candy,
If you’re going to take a day off, use some common sense on the day you do. There is nothing to say that the woman who sent the email could have made any reasonably sensible decisions on her weekend off. No one expected her to quickly whip up her nutrisystem meals while everyone else was eating at a restaurant, but nothing said she couldn’t order fajitas instead of a big bowl of pasta. You can join in the fun without having to make the worst choices on the menu.
I felt strongly that this person should go ahead with his plans. This diet has some wiggle room. Almost everyone cheats from time to time and I include myself in that sentence. The real key is not to let a day or two derail the entire plan. Because sometimes one day blends into the next, so you connect the dots a week later and realize you never really went back on the diet. What really counts is that, generally speaking, you’re consuming fewer calories and carbs overall, so you can get into ketosis repeatedly. If a few days derail you, it will really only take a few more days to get back on track and back into fat burning mode.
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